COML 3111

Literature, Art, and the Environment

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024. Courses of Study 2024-2025 is scheduled to publish mid-June.

That literature and art can express concern over the environment or reflect environmental attitudes is nothing new. This course, however, opens up the possibility that literature, film and art actively intervene in helping to define the boundaries of what constitutes the environment (literally that which turns around us). As we think about the profound links between writing and the environment; landscape and human activity; geological time and human time, our guides may include authors Homer, Wordsworth, Thoreau, Melville, Calvino, Le Guin, Atwood; artists Turner, Smithson, Holt, WalkingStick. Critical theory will also be brought in to help undo the idea that Nature exists as a set of green places that Humans, standing on one side of a clear divide, can either harm or heal. Students will write papers, undertake original research and participate in final group projects.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (ALC-AS, LA-AS)

View Enrollment Information